Business group opposed to tax increase should rethink its makeup

Lake County commissioners and a candidate for commission were "invited" — read that summoned — to a meeting of a private club called the Lake 100.

It's actually more like the Lake 35, a group of mostly middle-aged and older white guys who own businesses or are active in the development and legal communities. They fancy themselves leaders in Lake County, and they would have been right if this were 1955.

Their club is by invitation only, and it was meeting at the county's swankiest resort, which is owned by the family of one of them. Instead of going to the County Commission meeting and speaking their minds like everyone else, the Lake 100 gathered last week to berate commissioners for proposing a tax increase in the coming fiscal year's budget.

Only two of them showed up — Leslie Campione, who has consistently voted against increasing taxes, and Tim Sullivan, who gave a little tail-between-his-legs speech, apparently sorry that favored the increase in a preliminary vote.

Thomas Poole, the candidate opposing Campione, said he thought he was being invited to speak about the issue but quickly realized he was in error and that "I was there to listen." He said he left after about an hour without being asked for his stand on the matter.

Even though the event was advertised as a public meeting of county commissioners, it could not have been more ill-judged. Neither Campione nor Sullivan should have attended. At least Chairman Jimmy Conner and commissioners Welton Cadwell and Sean Parks had the good sense to take a pass.

Over and over, starting 34 years ago, the state attorney general has warned members of elected boards that they should not go to luncheon meetings because they ride the legal line of meeting the state's requirement for open meetings.

In two opinions in 1980 and 1999, the attorney general pointed out that such luncheons can have a "chilling" effect on the public's desire to attend such a meeting because they may be unable or unwilling to purchase a meal.

In a formal opinion to the city of Miami Beach in 1971, the attorney general noted that what is said at such luncheon meetings may be audible only to those seated at the table, which would violate the openness requirement.

What more does it take to get the point across?

If the Lake 100 really wants to lead this community, it should start by recognizing that 100,000 more people — very different people — live here today than when they held the reins of power years ago. By definition, a white-guy private club isn't an organization for leaders — it's just another special-interest group.

To be effective, leaders have to represent the spectrum of people who live here. Lots of people with the ability to really get something done are members of that group. Here's hoping they use those skills for the community, not just themselves.

Eustis backs off bad zoning idea

Faced with opposition from residents, Eustis commissioners last week voted 3-1 to get more input from the public before throwing out its carefully crafted growth plan.

Mayor Linda Bob was the lone vote against holding off on the bad proposal, and she scolded residents about how their opposition deprives African-American children of Eustis of opportunity. What that had to do with the topic of zoning or growth is anyone's guess.

Bob unfortunately seems to see every issue through the prism of the children she teaches at Eustis Heights Elementary. It is past time for her to update her viewpoint to include the entire city, which she is supposed to represent.

The other three, Albert Eckian, Kress Muenzmay and Karen LeHeup-Smith, voted to have the city manager set a public meeting so they could get some input from residents who would be enormously affected by the proposed ordinance.

In a memo, Acting City Manager Dianne Kramer told commissioners that staffers were just doing a routine sweep of the growth rules and decided that it would be best to allow virtually any type of commercial operation anywhere in the city, including residential areas, provided it's part of a bureaucratic creature called a "planned unit development."

The result would be that commissioners would arbitrarily decide on each individual request what could be built on each individual piece of property. This would be chaos and would make the city's whole plan useless.

Kramer warned them in a memo that small business wouldn't want to come to Eustis if they turned it down. That's just bogus.

A move to dismantle the city's hard-won growth plan is blatantly pro-developer and completely in opposition to the best interest of residents.